Various: Arabian Pop

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

There is often the complaint about the "Coca-Cola-isation" of popular music, by which people mean if you went to Bangkok or Bangalore you could find J-Lo posters.

The argument goes that pop music is becoming global, and specifically American.

Not so. For every J-Lo poster in Bangkok there were probably a couple of hundred for a local band but they are in Thai so invisible to the Western eye seeking the familiar.

Local cultures are rich in diversity and although under siege from MTV and the like, they still exist and are often vibrant. Open ears could do worse than tuning in to music from the Arab world, which is soulful and poppy, full of strange exoticism (The oud! The quavering glottal stop singing!), and often boasts serpentine melodies over what can pass for a dance beat and swooping string sections.

This column has previously recommended the Hemisphere label's Camelspotting but now also points to this 14-track collection of artists from Iraq, Egypt, the Lebanon, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. As the liner notes observe: "In the West the only images we get of the Arab world are of violence and intolerance.

You'd be forgiven for thinking there was no entertainment at all."

This joyous collection shows why these people don't have much use for a J-Lo.

When you've got Warda al-Jaza'iraya, who would?